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Three Years of the Modi Government

Ranjit Gupta Distinguished Fellow and Columnist, IPCS; former Indian Ambassador to Yemen and Oman; and former Member, National Security Advisory Board (NSAB), India

Indian Prime Minister (PM) Narendra
Modi has invested more personal energy and enthusiasm in the conduct and
stewardship of India’s external relations than any prime minister
since the first decade of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s premiership, resulting in
India enjoying a significantly higher profile in international relations than
at any time since then. Modi has also established an enviable international
reputation of being able to develop great personal rapport with foreign leaders
even in first meetings. This characteristic has the potential to pay
particularly high dividends vis-a-vis leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
countries because their decisions are unchallengeable policy.

Over the past four decades,
the eight countries of West Asia's Gulf region, the GCC countries, i.e.
Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and
Iraq and Iran, cumulatively became India’s preeminent oil and gas suppliers; and
together, they also emerged as India’s leading trade partner in the past decade.
Over 8 million Indians live and work there, and are the largest expatriate
community in each of the six GCC countries, sending annual remittances worth
US$ 35-40 billion. Anti-terrorism cooperation and intelligence-sharing have been
growing steadily since the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and are gratifying.
These facts are an enormous vote of confidence in India and Indians given that
these are overwhelmingly Muslim countries, conspicuously conscious and proud of
their Islamic identity, where internal security is a major concern, now more so
than ever before, and with many of them having particularly special relations
with Pakistan. No major power has anywhere near the kind of people-to-people
socio-cultural compatibility and socio-economic interdependence with this
region, particularly with the GCC countries, that India does.

The leaders of all these
countries have visited India, some of them several times, since 1997, with Iran's
then President Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, and Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah being
Chief Guests at India's Republic Day celebrations in 2003 and 2006,
respectively. Important ministers have exchanged visits often. Path-breaking
and visionary declarations envisaging cooperation in multiple fields have been
signed between India and these countries. Substantive relations with Israel
have grown strongly though remaining publicly low profile.

Though there are deep and
fundamental differences of opinion on many regional geopolitical issues,
leaders on both sides consciously decided to set them aside and build solid
bilateral relationships on the basis of mutual advantage and benefit particularly
in the economic, energy, and anti-piracy, anti-terrorism and intelligence
cooperation domains. India has long had serious reservations about military
alliances, military solutions to political disputes, and externally manipulated
regime change. This has helped India steer clear of conflicts raging in West
Asia, particularly since 2011, even as it successfully evacuated its citizens
from war zones. There are no bilaterally contentious issues.

For the aforementioned reasons, India has excellent relationships
simultaneously with Israel, Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and the
UAE.

In a nutshell, this was the broad picture of India’s
relationship with West Asia when Modi assumed office.

As prime minister, Modi has
maintained policy continuity and built further upon this strong foundation. There have been two particularly
significant developments during the Modi era – one relating to Israel and the
other to the UAE.

Given the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) and his
own known closeness to Israel, Modi publicly signalled attaching high priority
to India’s relations with Israel in West Asia. Modi had a particularly friendly
phone conversation with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 24 hours
after the former's assumption of office as prime minister in May 2014.
Netanyahu was amongst the select foreign leaders that Modi met in New York
during the UN's annual session in September 2014. This is a very vital strategic relationship
which will be strongly nurtured.

In August 2015, Modi became only
the second Indian prime minister to visit the UAE, 34 years after former Indian
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, finally assuaging the UAE’s long-standing and fully
justified unhappiness: Sheikh Zayed, the
ruler of Abu Dhabi, and both ceremonial and executive head of state of the UAE,
had visited India in 1975, 1992 and 1997; and Sheikh Mohamed bin Rashid, the ruler
of Dubai, visited India in 2007, 2010, and 2011 as prime minister. Modi
received unprecedented protocol courtesies from the royal family and the visit
was an absolutely outstanding success from every perspective. A singular consequence
was that the crown prince,currently the UAE’s de
facto head of state, has since then visited India twice, first in less than six
months in February 2016 and the second as chief guest at India's Republic Day
celebrations in January 2017. Thus, the two leaders have met thrice in less
than 18 months. Such frequency is unique in India’s bilateral relations. The
three joint statements have sketched a comprehensive and visionary road map of
strategic cooperation in multiple fields.

Modi’s visit to the UAE was followed by
successful visits to Saudi Arabia, Iran and Qatar. Oman’s foreign minister was the
first foreign dignitary to visit India after the Modi government was sworn in.
Oman has been India's most consistent friend and supporter amongst Arab
countries. Modi is likely to visit Oman when an agreement of very considerable strategic
significance could be signed. Turkey has become a particularly proactive player
in West Asia and Modi has made a deliberate effort to engage with Turkey; and
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan visited India in May this year.

However, a dark cloud deserves priority attention. Many months
have passed since the UAE agreed to make a US$ 75 billion investment in India in
the August 2015 Joint Statement, the largest and most explicit commitment made
by any country to India, but to the UAE's deep disappointment, no agreement on
its utilisation has been signed. India has not been able to come up with a
single viable project even as the more than a decade-long legacy issue of the UAE’s
past investment in India remain unresolved. Farzad B, Chabahar and associated
industrial projects, the International North South Transport Corridor, etc are
other telling examples. This is due to a long continuing
and abject failure to implement agreements made with foreign countries.

One would have thought that with Modi’s
action-and-results oriented persona, unchallengeable and strong leadership of
his party, cabinet and government, a parliamentary majority, and strong public
support - all luxuries that most previous governments did not enjoy - a
conscious and comprehensive effort would have been made to address long-standing
critical systemic external relations-related governance deficiencies and
weaknesses; but nothing meaningful appears to have been done.

Unless such lacunae are addressed
on a war footing, there is a real risk of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, sitting
on mountains of investible funds and keen to invest in India, losing interest at
a time when the gap between their geopolitical policies and India’s approach is
widening with the distinct potential to weaken India’s most beneficial
international relationships.

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